#cityelfweek25

His voice travelled, a rumble behind him, the light and lovely drip drip drip of his vowels and his consonants, the ligatures and aspirants of Qunlat. The words like a poem, and even Saira knew it by heart, now. A gazelle leaping from word to word, to dance.

Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun.

She mouthed the words under her breath as he spoke them. All of his being turned, each night, to the business of tending to the sharpness of his soul, like one would trim a garden, tend to battle wounds. No doubt had ever torn him from his meaning—save for when Asaala had been taken from him—and no doubt would ever tear him from the making and re-making of his duty to the Qun. When all else broke within and outwith her, Sten stood as bulwark, as hope.

He repeated his prayer as many times as was necessary. He brought to light all darkness, all shame, the detritus of each day, and threw it to the fire with his intonation. And when he was done with Asaala, he took off the dar-saam and the vitaar, and stripped away the layers of authority to simply sit, with no pretense, as Sten. Who was weapon and did not cease to be weapon just because he had peeled off his clothes, but showed to Saira the flipside of the blade; the guts and love that the armour protected.

He sat a few moments more, shirtless, watching the stars Saira could also glimpse through the flaps of their shared tent. And she ached to be able to read his expression.

“Kadan,” he sighed, as if only now remembering there was a world of solid things beyond the teachings and the prayer, “the stars are strange, here. They are not the same as in the South. Even if we are closer to Seheron than we were, they are not the stars of my people. Or of yours.”

She crawled out of their tent and wrapped her arms around his broad, strong chest. He tensed under her touch, shoulders haunching. Relaxed again after a moment, as he settled.

“Sten, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“I will never understand the touching. My affections for you are clear, as are yours for me. The touching is superfluous.”

She kissed the side of his head, and laughed.

“You seemed to understand it plenty, last night.”

“We both have bodies, do we not? There is no harm in giving each other what we need.”

She hummed, and shivered at the thought. But there was no want in her when she sat in Sten’s lap, her legs wrapped around his hips and her arms around his neck. The confines of their relationship shifted, rose like a tide. They had been lovers and then friends and then lovers again. Ten years of finding patterns, shifting weight, heart meeting heart, no need for definitions. They’d shared beds and shared spoons and shared fears—they could share pleasure, too.

His hands remained by his side, still and immutable. She was a small child, and he was the great grandfather tree to hide in when all the world grew loud. The thought made her smirk. Sten had no reaction, and no interest in asking, and she expected neither. They made no requests of each other, no demand for comfort or response. Just freedom, with Sten, who knew with such certainty and at all moments who he was, and what that being made him wish for. Sometimes, it was her body and the warmth of her body. Other times, like tonight, it was being reminded that the stars could be strange, but the hands clutching him to the ground would always be the same.

She ran a knuckle against his cheekbone. She leaned close, chest to chest, and chased his heartbeat with hers.

“Can you tell me again?”

“Tell you what?”

“Of shokra toh ebra.”

“I have told you a thousand times before. What more could you learn from it? Or are you a child, told a million times why a chore is necessary, still failing to grasp the imortance of it?”

“I just like to hear it. You tell it the best.”

“I am no Tamassran. I am no Ashkaari.”

“But you are Sten. My Sten.”

“If I am to be anyone’s, then so should you. It is only fair. But I doubt you would let anyone declare such power over you.”

“Am I not? I am kadan.”

“So is Asaala. Are you a sword?”

Was she not? The blade at the end of the Blight’s fist. A knife drawn in the dark, with whispers in the hilt, with ichor blood, despair.

“I am not.”

“For you are both my heart. Through you both, my body bends to the demands of the Qun.”

“Tell me then, tell me! Shokra toh ebra—”

“Yes, yes. Through struggle, you find who you are.”

“But tell me the story.”

He sighed, and rolled his eyes. Delightful. She loved to get under his skin. She giggled and giggled, clutching his face as if to kiss him.

He began: “Ashkaari Koslun had risen from the sea. Great blight had come to his people and to his land; like locusts it devoured bones, children, dreams. Ruination followed in its wake—all was poisoned. The very blood of the world was poison–are you mouthing the words with me?”

She grinned. Someone more kind would have called her “shit-eating.” Sten called it:

“Ignorant. You are worse than a child. Dogs lick their own genitals over and over, hoping it will clean them. The futility of the act doesn’t drive them mad, they are too foolish to understand. But I understand. Why do you torture me so?”

She had no grin, now. Instead was deadly serious. Her hands hadn’t moved from the sides of his face: she tilted him downwards, so she could look him in the eyes. They widened. He pried her hands off of him and held them. His thumb ran over her knuckles, the only concession his stony demeanour allowed to their love.

“My answer has not changed, and will not change.”

The question was there but unsaid. She’d asked it a thousand times: as futile as it was desperate. Saira bit her lip, and her gaze travelled. Sten’s arms, his chest, his throat, his lips. The dents the dar-saam left on his skin. The surety of them ached in her heart. Flesh, solid and immutable, made beautiful by duty. She leaned down and kissed the marks on his shoulder, as if she could devour them, make them hers. Subsume what they represented into herself, become what she ate.

She ran a trail of kisses, up Sten’s arms, down his chest. Her movement made awkward and constricted, Sten was still clutching her hands. He let go to hold her up. In the moonlight her dark skin was almost blue, and his was lovely, lovely, rough and scarred and tender like his touches.

She would not beg. She had begged, but that was past. Her despair had no words left; she was adrift.

“I have said all that I needed to say about this, and will say no more.”

All her life, the whole world telling her no. No, she could not save her mother. No, she could not save Nelaros. Or Shianni. Or herself.

No, she could not die. Alistair and Morrigan had made sure of that.

Sten’s refusal, the refusal he had gifted her for nearly a decade, hurt most of all. He had decided this for her, evaluated her worth against the demands of the Qun, and found her lacking.

“This isn’t one of the Cantos. I’m not an acolyte you should be sending away three times until she returns a fourth time, finally ready to convert!”

She peeled herself off of him and fully expected to see anger in his face. But Sten avoided her gaze.

“How long have I been asking?”

“Too long.”

“Sten, you have shown me the beauty of the Qun. The clarity of purpose. All things, oriented towards meaning. Don’t you think, that after all that I’ve seen—all that’s been done to me—that I don’t deserve that comfort? You’ve called me Kadan, Ashkaari, Basalit-an… In all but name, and yet you refuse me this one mercy. This one kindness. Why? Worthy to travel with, worthy to share your bed and your meals with, but unworthy of this? Why?”

Crickets answered, their nightly song a chorus to her grief. Because this was, and she knew it, this was grief. She yearned for clarity. A sense to this life she was undeserving of, that she’d cheated herself into by being loved.

Sten sat. Unmovable. Unmoved, she thought, but then he looked away and his eyes glistened.

“…Sten?”

She worried. He’d never wept. She’d joke he couldn’t. But he worked through the pain in his jaw and his hands, clenching and unclenching them.

“I couldn’t.”

She had to come closer to hear him. He spoke like a confession.

“Kadan, I couldn’t. And not because you are unworthy. Far from it. I couldn’t, because…”

He flinched, disgusted at the conflict inside him. She was close again. Reaching for him again. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t reciprocate either. She reached and she was alone; he was breaking something between them to give her the truth.

Because she deserved it.

“If you converted. If you joined the Qun, with your body and your heart. With your soul. Kadan… The Tamassrans would take you from me. We would be apart.”

“What do you mean?”

“You would not be Sten, or Adaari, or Antaam at all. With your daggers, your stealth, your poisons, your skill with words…”

“I would be Ben Hassrath.”

“Yes. You are an elf.”

“I was also the Hero of Ferelden.”

“Is she not dead? It’s been so long, Kadan. Few in the north would recognise you. You have changed.”

She reached up, and brushed a tear away from Sten’s cheek, “So have you.”

He scoffed. “The Qun demands we welcome all who wish to convert, should they be worthy. You are more than worthy, Kadan. And I am ashamed, that I have kept you from our teachings for so long. But I cannot… we have traveled together for so long.”

“Did you lie to me, Sten?”

“I hate the very thought of lying. To you most of all."

“A decade ago. You said you’d received new orders. That your Kithshok had told you to stay in the south, and continue your investigations into how the Blight had come to pass.”

“That was not a lie.”

“Really?”

“I received my summons back to Par Vollen when we were in Kont-Aar.”

She did quick math. “Three years ago.”

“That is correct.”

“So you're–”

He gripped her hands, and stilled her words before she could speak them into truth.

“I have not abandoned the Qun. I have not abandoned Asaala. I have not abandoned my duty to the orders my Kithshok gave me. Do I not wear the dar-saam? The vitaar?”

“You do.”

She nodded. Why wouldn't he nod too? She peered up at him and tried to catch his gaze, his eyes hard and haunted in his face.

"Sten. My sweet, foolish friend. Sten, you do not have to prove to me your worth. As a warrior. As a member of the Beresaad. As anything. I mean, look at me! I've made a piss poor job of living my whole life, so I have. I was a shit Andrastian, in my youth. Too scared of my grief to even light a lantern for my mother. I was a shit daughter. A shit wife to Alistair. I was an even worse Hero of Ferelden, let alone Warden-Commander. Look at me, my love. Look," and she smiled when he did, that connection re-established, that love to share in, "I've this whole life Morrigan and Alistair have gifted me, and a better person than me would have been grateful for each and every breath. But I'm not. I've made my peace with it. I can make my peace with being a shit Qunari, too."

His expression had drained, no misery nor anguish. Just Sten's usual illegible demeanour.

"I am ashamed." he said. It was as if he hadn't even spilled a single tear. Saira's relief was palpable: the Sten she knew, the Sten she understood, was back. She held his grief, still, but she could gift it back to him just as gently.